Opinion: Quark is playing catch-up with InDesign's technology lead, and the ALAP acquisition shows it's still in the race.Quark's acquisition of the business and assets of popular plug-in maker
A Lowly Apprentice Production, announced on Dec. 14, provides opportunity to gain perspective on the next round of the QuarkXPress vs. InDesign saga.
Let's review so we're all up to speed: Until the arrival of Adobe InDesign in late 1999, Quark was pretty much the only game in town when it came to professional page layout. (Excepting some Asian countries, where PageMaker was market leader).
So considerable was the market dominance of QuarkXPress that at first it seemed like InDesign could barely scratch it, and Quark did what most software developers in a dominant market position do: It adopted a wait-and-see position.
Then came InDesign 2.0. While the first version of Adobe's page layout program generated curiosity at best, the second release brought a few killer features: support for transparency, drop shadows and support for Mac OS X, still lacking from QuarkXPress at that time.
Click here for details on the public demonstration of QuarkXPress 7.
Today, Adobe InDesign is available in its fourth major release (aka InDesign CS2). While Quark still holds a majority share in most markets, migration to InDesign has clearly taken off around the world.
Worse: Adobe has managed to establish InDesign as the technology leader in the market, and pushed Quark into catch-up mode.
Which brings us nicely back to Quark's acquisition of ALAP. While hardly a household name for the average PC user, ALAP enjoys a healthy reputation in the page layout market, best know for collections such as XPert Tools, the popular ShadowCaster extension, and a Photoshop import extension currently available for free on the Quark Web site.
Acquiring ALAP is definitely a smart move for Quark, since it is an easy way to extend the core functionality of its flagship product.
This concerns missing functionality—ALAP's Item Styles extension is comparable to Object Styles in Adobe InDesign CS2—as well as imaging technology.
Read more news here from ALAP (A Lowly Apprentice Production).
Interestingly, InEffects, one of the most advanced imaging products from ALAP, is a plug-in for InDesign. ALAP also distributes Imposer and Imposer Pro imposition software; a limited version of Imposer, InBooklet, is bundled with InDesign.
While it is clear that these technologies will allow Quark to increase the perceived value of its product and even help it gain foothold in markets where it is not present, such as imposition, a few questions remain.
How soon can we expect ALAP's technologies to be integrated into QuarkXPress? Version 7 of the page layout software is just around the corner, and it is not clear which, if any, of the extensions might be bundled immediately with the program.
Another question: How long will it take Quark to bring the imaging technology up to date?
Photoshop import, for instance, has become a widely requested feature. While the currently available Photoshop import extension developed by ALAP is in some respects more powerful than comparable functionality in InDesign, it does not completely support the Photoshop file format (import of duo-tone images is lacking, for instance, as well as support for Layer Comps and Layer Styles).
And then there is the question of the few InDesign plug-ins ALAP has developed: It somehow doesn't seem too likely that Quark will get into the business of selling plug-ins to Adobe products.
In any case, the acquisition shows the extent to which Quark is committed to re-establishing its leadership in the market.
The fierce competition between QuarkXPress and InDesign is not likely to cool down any time soon.
Andreas Pfeiffer is founder of The Pfeiffer Report on Emerging Trends and Technologies. He can be reached at pfeiffer@pfeifferreport.com.
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